


Manhood

by ElAlmaDelMar



Category: One Piece
Genre: Canonical Child Abuse, Canonical Human Experimentation, Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, Internalized Transphobia, M/M, Misgendering, Multi, Trans Male Character, Transphobia, also content warning: zeff's shitty misogyny, basically content warning: Vinsmokes, not beta read we die like men, there is not enough trans Sanji content out there, which is to say there's a decent amount but there should always be more
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-24
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:33:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26071945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElAlmaDelMar/pseuds/ElAlmaDelMar
Summary: He wants to make things with his hands, not break things. He wants to give things to others — a flower to the servant girl who cleans his room, food to the mice that creep in the corners. He wants to see other people smile because of things he does. He wants tohelp, not to be served.
Relationships: Minor or Background Relationship(s), Roronoa Zoro/Sanji
Comments: 58
Kudos: 202





	1. Germa Kingdom

**Author's Note:**

  * For [KabochaKitsune](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KabochaKitsune/gifts).



> For KabochaKitsune, because all genders of Sanji are valid and deserve love.

It starts before he is even born. 

Sora, heavily pregnant, does not recline back on the raised hospital bed; she sits as close to bolt upright as her rounded belly will allow, her lips pressed tight together and her face still grey-pale with the aftereffects of the drug she devised. Judge stands over her, waves of silent rage radiating from him. The tension in the room is thick and stifling. 

Reiju, blank-faced, hovers near the threshold, unnoticed; if her father starts to turn, she will duck away. But she wants to _know_.

Beside the bed, a technician offers a readout to the furious king. 

"The male embryo divided properly into three," he says, his expression carefully blank and his tone even. He knows Judge values scientific expertise and detachment, but he is not immune to the tension; before anything else, he is a citizen of Germa Kingdom, and his king and queen are bitterly divided. "However, the female…" 

"Six babies you meant me to bear," Sora spits, venom in her weak voice. " _Six_. I'm not a dog. Four will be hard enough. _Two_ are hard for most women." 

Judge ignores her. "And the modifications?" 

"It's too early to tell, sire. As we're seeing with Lady Reiju, most of the changes won't even begin to show until they're a few years old." 

Reiju is three. She has already read some of her father's scientific books, and knows she is far ahead of any milestones of normal human development. 

"Are they healthy?" Sora asks, and despite her anger, she presses a hand over her belly, protective of the little lives within. 

The technician hesitates; he does not know if answering her question will provoke Judge, who has acted until now as though the bed were empty. But she is queen; he cannot ignore her as the king does. "As far as I can tell, yes, your majesty. They appear perfectly healthy." 

She lets out a quiet breath, the closest she will come to showing relief in front of her now hated husband, and does not speak again until Judge has left.

* * *

In early March, with snow still falling heavily at the high latitude Judge prefers for the floating kingdom, Sora gives birth to four children. It has been a hard winter for her, and she has spent much of the last few months abed, too weak to move far as her body devotes its resources to the growing babies within her. Now, she labors in the delivery room, sweat standing out on her pale brow as she summons all the strength she possesses. The drug she took to protect her children has taken a toll on her; she will never be the same, and she knows and accepts that consequence, but she wonders if she will survive this birth. 

She must. She _must_. Her children will need her. Reiju was born cold and distant, an abnormal baby who did not respond to her mother's presence — not at first. It has only been with Sora's steady, devoted attention that the little girl, intelligent and advanced far beyond her years, has started to smile and reach out for affection. If her drug was not successful, these four will be similar, and they will need her to teach them love and warmth just as Reiju does. 

Finally, the first comes. One of the boys. 

Judge, attending the birth not of his children but of his test subjects, directs the attending doctor to note _Ichiji's_ birth. A cold name, from a cold father, for a child he means to be just as cold. Sora rests only a few gasping moments before she begins to push again. 

Another of the boys comes, not soon enough for her tired, hurting body. _Niji._

The girl next. _Sanju._ This is the child that should have been three, and Sora senses — dimly, through her pain and growing exhaustion — Judge's anger deepen as he spits out the name. No matter how tired she is, she wants to snarl at him, to tell him that his fury should only be for her, and not for these babies he wanted so damned much. But she has nothing to spare to fight him, not when there is still one more baby to come, and her life to cling to. 

And when she feels her strength has nearly given out, when she thinks she may truly die bringing her children into the world, _Yonji_ is finally born. She has done it. And she has lived. 

Judge examines the children as the doctor assists her in delivering the afterbirth and cleans her up gently. He pays no attention to his wife. She might as well be nothing more than a piece of equipment where he is concerned, and she knows, even through the haze of her exhaustion, that it is not a show. She defied him, prioritized the wellbeing of her children over his ambitions for his kingdom, and thus she has lost any trace of favor he might ever have shown her. That is the price of her action, and she accepts it. Better he hate her than she sacrifice her babies to his greed.

Newly born, it's still impossible to tell if his modifications or her drug won out. She knows that no matter what is happening inside the cells of their little bodies, they will need her to bring love into their lives, for Judge has no capacity to do so.

* * *

The realization that he is different from his brothers begins so early that he can never really pinpoint it, and the differences are so legion that he cannot single any one of them out for prominence among the rest. His brothers are strong, vicious, and cold; he tries to summon those same qualities and cannot — does not _want_ to. When he imitates their coldness, it feels ugly and stilted and makes him sick to his stomach. He cannot match their strength, no matter how hard he tries; endeavoring to do so leaves him bruised, aching, exhausted, insufficient. Their swaggering manner is nothing but a facade on him, one that rings hollow and too clearly fake. 

"Now now, Lady Sanju," one of his minders tells him, and even as small as he is, he wants to cry at being called _Lady Sanju_. It feels as wrong as all the rest. "Why don't you try to be more like your sister, hm?" Later, when he is left in his room alone, he does cry, hugging a pillow so that he can bury his face in it. He's only four, and everything is wrong. 

As often as he can get away with, he makes the long trek to the hospital at the edge of the kingdom. Mama lives there, attended by her ladies, and they don't speak of her at all in the palace. She won't tell him why she's so far away, but holds him on her lap and listens to him talk about the things he reads in his books, or about the butterflies and birds he has seen in the severely elegant palace gardens. He doesn't talk about his brothers, even when he comes to see her with bruises clear to be seen on his face and arms. 

One day, he tells her — unsure, halting, struggling for words to describe in his childlike way feelings and thoughts he has never heard of, even in his books — how much he dislikes being called _Lady_ Sanju. How the title seems to rankle on his tongue like something sour. 

She listens — doesn't seem to understand, not at first, and he feels something inside him start to crumple at her loving, gentle incomprehension. But she doesn't rebuke him or tell him he's wrong, so he soldiers on, until she asks, softly, "Would you be happier to be Lord Sanju instead?" 

It isn't quite right, but it's so much _better_ that he sobs a little in relief, and hides his face against her shoulder. She strokes his back and hums a soft lullaby to him, and he clings and thinks that name over and over. _Lord Sanju. Lord Sanju. Lord Sanju._

In more visits, spread out over what will be (though he does not know it yet) the last years he has with her, he figures out the shape of what he craves, what feels so wrong in his life. She helps him, listening and asking gentle questions that help him clear his mind. 

The differences between him and his brothers are legion. Some of those differences are things he does not want at all. He doesn't want to be cold, to laugh an ugly laugh, to be mean to his caretakers. But he wants to be strong. He wants to be as fast and sure as they are. He wants to run like they run, to swim like they swim, to leap and climb and tumble with the fearless ease they do. He doesn't want to be so afraid of getting hurt because his skin and his bones are so much softer than theirs. He wants his body to be hard, not his spirit. He wants his body to stop betraying him over and over and over. 

(Little does he know how much betrayal is still in store.) 

He wants more than that, too. He wants to make things with his hands, not break things. He wants to give things to others — a flower to the servant girl who cleans his room, food to the mice that creep in the corners. He wants to see other people smile because of things he does. He wants to _help_ , not to be served. 

His mother never tells him he is wrong to want what he wants, and when he has found enough words, often enough, to voice his wants, she starts calling him her little man, her son, her boy. She praises his first attempts at cooking, until he sneaks into the kitchen as often as he can to practice, or even just to watch. Everything she does, everything she says, makes him love her more. 

He never speaks of these things to the servants in the palace, to his brothers themselves, to his older sister. Certainly not to his father, who watches them beat him up and says nothing. He does not need to be told that no one will understand, and that his standing in the royal family is on thin and shaky grounds as it is. 

He hears the head of the lineage factor lab call him a failure. His brothers hear it too, and it becomes their new favorite taunt. 

During the last year, he sees his mother fade. Her hair, once a soft silky gold like his, becomes brittle, thin, and colorless; her skin, which has been sallow and pale for as long as can remember, takes on a greyish, waxy cast. Her voice, always quiet, becomes feeble. He does not know that she is dying, but he understands that she is slipping away from him, no matter how tightly he holds onto her. 

And then, one awful day, she is gone. 

After her funeral — a grand state occasion, Judge honoring her in death even though he ignored her entirely in life — he cries and cries until he throws up. The servants clean him, not ungently but with so little love that he thinks he would rather they were harsh. Their distant care reminds him that he will never be touched with true love again, and the tears come afresh. His life is empty. She's gone, and he is surrounded only by people who hate him. Even Reiju, who is nice sometimes when no one is looking, regards him coldly now. Everything is over. He wants to die with her. 

It only gets worse from there. The next time he manages to drag himself out of his room to train with his siblings — days of weeping and prostration later — he is seized instead and dragged away. Locked in a cell, locked in a mask, locked in the dark. 

As the soldiers slam the door of the cell behind him, he hears one say to the other, "We aren't to call her Lady Sanju anymore. She's just the prisoner now. King's command. Forget you ever heard of a second princess, if you wanna stay out of a cell yourself." 

And even through his terror, there is some part of him that feels a fragment of shameful relief.

* * *

Over time, he learns that there are only a handful of guards entrusted with the secret of who he is. And while at first they're professionally distant, adding to his terrible despair, over time they begin to soften. The king isn't wasting his elite engineered troops on guarding a little girl. His minders are just human — just like him. 

He speaks to them, and they don't last long before they start answering him — start talking to him when they bring him food or check on him to make sure he's still alive. He doesn't tell them his biggest secret — no, he clutches the memory of his mother's voice saying _my son_ close and tight. But he tells them about wanting to be a cook, and one of them smuggles a cookbook with his next meal. Little by little, they bring him things — each time, saying "Ah, what can it hurt? You need something to do down here in the dark, don't you?" 

It _is_ something to do, and even in the heavy mask, he can learn. He reads books — reads about cooking, reads about all the scattered oceans of the world. Reads about _All Blue_ , and feels his heart race with longing. 

He reads about Devil Fruits, and remembers overhearing his father talking with one of the elite units. They had been hunting for fruits to give the royal children, each carefully selected to enhance the engineered powers each child possessed. The commander had reported that the doku doku no mi, or _the fruit for Lady Reiju_ , was currently claimed, and the owner of it was an official at Impel Down, far beyond Germa's reach. A substitute fruit would have to be found for her. 

His fingers trace the entry for the _suke suke no mi_ , the fruit of invisibility, and he thinks to himself, _that's supposed to be mine._ With invisibility, he could hide from his brothers when they went hunting to hurt him. With the power of the fruit, perhaps he could have been strong enough to please his father. He could have grown into the role prepared for him, and the powers he was supposed to manifest.

He reads and cooks in prison, and still feels himself rotting from within. More interested in cooking than eating, he gives the guards much of what he prepares. They tell him, "It's good, Lady Sanju!" forgetting utterly the decree to forget his name, and he finds it all too easy to hide his wince behind the mask that weighs him down. He hates himself more for feeling grateful for that concealment. 

The only clothing he has in this prison is the yellow dress he wore when he was locked up. As it grows filthy and tattered, he approaches the most sympathetic of the guards again, asking — diffidently, cautiously — if maybe they could bring him a pair of trousers? His brothers' things must still go to the laundry eventually, and no one will notice one or two missing items. The princes are well dressed. His own things are probably long gone, he reasons to the listening ear of the young man who knows he's never getting promoted out of dungeon duty. 

A few days later, he has two pair of the snug trousers his brothers wear, and a couple shirts as well — damaged and outgrown, but a blue one of Niji's and a green one of Yonji's are in the mix. He asks for some sewing things, too, and cuts his ragged yellow dress back to be another loose shirt. It feels infinitely better to be dressed like one of the boys, instead of like his sister. Even if all he is now is a prisoner. 

When they cross into East Blue and lay their first attack on this new sea, Reiju sets him free. He begs her, weeping, to let him go here, where he can vanish into a sea Germa doesn't know. He might not have the devil fruit meant for him or the powers he was supposed to inherit from Judge's science, but obscurity will let him vanish all the same. Reiju listens, wavers, and finally bends the bars of his cell with more strength than he can ever dream of achieving, and tells him where to find the key to his mask. Judge is distracted, she tells him — if he's quick, he can get it and be gone before anyone notices. 

He's not quick enough, or not lucky enough. Judge finds him fumbling with the key, and he weeps in fear, knowing that this time, there will be no kind guards, no smuggled books or kitchen tools. Perhaps his father will kill him right here. 

But instead — for reasons he could never even guess at — Judge lets him go. To his death, so he says. "There's no way someone of your pathetic nature could survive the realities of this world." Even now he can only tell Sanji how weak and pathetic he is. But even so, he's letting him free. 

"On one condition!" the king declares, looming over him and scowling down at Sanji's small, filthy form. "You are my failure, Sanju — my one shame. I will let you go here, where you can disappear into the world — so long as you do not identify yourself as my daughter, for your whole life! Never let the name _Vinsmoke_ pass your lips! Never mention the Germa Kingdom! You are not mine, and can claim nothing of me." 

And even though it feels like freedom, he can taste the rejection, and he weeps as the heavy iron mask falls from his head. 

It's Reiju who leads him — still weeping — out of the palace, out of the kingdom entirely, and down into the port of this island whose name he doesn't know. He looks up at her, and is startled to see tears in her eyes as well. 

"See that ship, Sanju?" she asks, pointing. "Go to it. It's a civilian ship, they always take on kids to work. Go! You can be free there!" 

Crying, he tries to stumble out thanks to her — to tell her how much her help means to him — but she cuts him off. "There's nothing for you in Germa," she says. "No even me. Go! Go into the world, little sister — you're too kind for us. Go find a place in the world where you can be yourself." 

And he does — he runs away from her, away from Germa, away from his mother's grave and everything he has ever known. And with her words ringing in his ears, when the galley master looks him up and down and asks his name, he borrows the masculine ending given his brothers — that should have been given to him, if the world had been a little kinder — and says, "Sir, I'm Sanji, and I wanna be a cook!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this idea has been tickling around in the back of my head for A While, and I've been struggling with writer's block for By Any Other Name, and then after I read adietxt's amazing fic [bark to smoke, wood to ash](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26047930), it knocked a whole bunch of words loose in my brain about my own take on the trans Sanji concept. I sat down and plonked out the first couple chapters of this fic in an afternoon. 
> 
> So, have at. Obligatory disclaimer: Sanji's experience of trans masculinity is certainly not the _only_ way someone can experience it. There are as many different ways to be trans as there are trans people in the world. Sanji's experience is also not a portrayal of _my_ experience. It is written specifically for his character. 
> 
> Also, the description of Reiju as an infant is not in _any_ way intended to invoke the way autistic children often present at a young age. According to the Vivre Card information, Reiju's modifications at first left her as soulless as Ichiji, Niji, and Yonji, and she learned how to feel and express love from Sora. That's all I'm dealing with there.


	2. East Blue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sanji starts a new life for himself, and finds that living as himself carries more challenges than he thought.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Went back and added a little to Chapter 1 last night, too.

He — _Sanji_ , that's his name now, and even the small change means the world to him, makes him want to laugh with joy every time he hears it — doesn't get to cook right away. And although Sanji grumbles about being relegated to sweeping the floor and washing dishes, he likes the _chef de cuisine_ immensely. The head of the _Orbit_ 's galley, Necchi, is a stern man, and won't forgive anyone who serves the guests less than the best. Sanji respects that. He knows he _can_ earn his place among the cooks, if he works hard and learns everything he can about the running of the vast kitchen that serves all the guests and crew. 

At first, he is afraid of nearly everyone. The cooks themselves, adults one and all, are loud and rough and vulgar, nothing like the respectful servants and disciplined soldiers of Germa Kingdom. The only comparison his mind can find is to his brothers, and the first time the pasty cook curses at him for getting underfoot, he immediately cringes away from an expected blow and nearly starts crying on the spot. It takes him time to learn that the running joke of the _Orbit_ 's kitchen is that every galley boy is named Damn Brat and it means nothing at all. 

The bigger challenge comes with the sleeping quarters. 

The king of Germa is a scientist, and his children have been raised with a thorough education in science of all sorts — human anatomy very much included. Sanji has long known how his body is not a boy's body, even if a boy's mind and soul inhabit it. But he has always lived and slept alone — first in a royal bedroom for one, and later a royal dungeon cell for one. At the end of his first day on _Orbit_ , he follows the other crewmen to a narrow room deep in the bowels of the ship, where hammocks are strung in rows, stacked two deep. 

One of the cabin boys, a lanky kid nearing puberty who has taken Sanji somewhat under his wing this first day, gestures toward a lower-level hammock near the middle of the room. "You can have Deek's old spot," he says. "He jumped ship a couple ports ago. And left half his stuff here, too! Lucky thing for you, huh?" Sanji owns nothing but the clothes on his back, after all, and this boy, Derrick, knows it. He thinks Sanji is a refugee from the town Germa attacked, and Sanji hasn't tried to disabuse him of that notion. 

_Never let the name_ Vinsmoke _pass your lips! Never mention the Germa Kingdom!_

He has no home and no past, and so he will not argue with anyone who tries to make one up for him. And it makes a good excuse for why he came aboard with empty hands. A boy who plans to go to sea packs some clothes and a sleeping shirt, but a refugee fleeing the destruction of his home has a reason to have nothing. 

But as he looks around the room, and identifies the locker on the wall that used to be this Deek's, he realizes that he's in an awkward position. All around him, the men and boys are stripping out of their work clothes, down to underwear, and donning whatever they sleep in. It's a motley mix of nightshirts, loose trousers, shorts, t-shirts, and other things. And he realizes with a sinking feeling that he's going to have to strip too — even if not tonight, in deference to his lack of pyjamas of any kind, then in the future, once the lack has been remedied. He can't wear his filthy old shirt and stained trousers forever. 

Can he keep himself hidden? Tonight, and tomorrow night, and every night after this? No one is naked, but close-fitting underwear leaves little to be hidden, and his underwear is decidedly a girl's underwear, not a boy's. Panic rises in his chest as a whole host of new worries overtake him. They sleep communally and change clothes together in this room — will they bathe communally as well? Will he have to show himself one way or another? How could he be so foolish as to think he could come aboard this ship and proclaim himself a boy and think it would all go smoothly? Maybe he should run away now… 

"Hey, hey, it's okay." Derrick pats at his shoulder, rough but well-intentioned. "I'm sorry, Sanji. I didn't mean to remind you about… about stuff you don't wanna think about." It takes Sanji a wild, panicked moment to realize Derrick thinks he's upset over losing his _things_. "Let's see if Deek left his old nightshirt behind, and the next time we make port, I'll help you go find some stuff of your own, okay? We're all issued uniforms, that's standard, and you'll have at least one pay packet by the time we get to Rooster City." 

Deek did indeed leave a nightshirt behind. It's the best possible outcome, Sanji realizes, and pulls off his old yellow shirt gratefully, replacing it with the worn but clean cotton garment that falls nearly to the floor. Deek must have been a grownup, a lot taller than him. 

Taking off his shirt reveals nothing — he's only eight, after all — and with the nightshirt on and covering him down to the ankles, he can pull off his trousers underneath it so no one sees his girl underwear or notices what he's missing. Derrick still seems worried over him, so he summons a slightly shaky smile for the older boy and holds up his arms in a shrug. The cuffs of the nightshirt's sleeves entirely hide his hands. "I think it's a little small," he says, an attempt at a joke, and Derrick isn't the only one who laughs at it. 

"Attaboy," Derrick says, and Sanji feels that delightful warm glow in his chest. "That's the spirit. Keep smiling and no one can get you down. Now, morning comes real early for the kitchens, so you better get to sleep. You'll be up before the dawn!" Around them, the men are rolling into their hammocks, and so Sanji does the same. He's still afraid of how he can keep his secret, but over the fear, he feels a glowing sense of hope.

He's free.

* * *

Life on the _Orbit_ settles into a comfortable rhythm faster than Sanji could have expected. He sweeps the floor and washes dishes and wipes counters and stove burners, and does not even get to touch the food for the first few weeks, but he realizes quickly that he was brought aboard not just as a galley boy but as an _apprentice_ , and between meal rushes, one or another of the cooks will often pull him aside to teach him new skills. Many of these things, he already taught himself out of books, down in the dungeon — but beyond his existing skills, he proves to be a quick study, easily picking up the skills and learning far more than he ever could have from just reading words on a page. 

As he settles into his life, Sanji finds his emotions sometimes going far out of his control. Someone will say something, or move in a particular way, or he'll catch sight of a passenger with particularly-colored hair or clothing, and all of a sudden, a wash of grief or rage or panic will fill him until he can't hold it back, he has to yell or cry or punch something or else he feels he'll be altogether consumed. One day, he refuses to get out of bed in the morning, just stubbornly curls up in his hammock and resists all attempts to dislodge him; after determining he isn't sick, the head chef stands him up in front of the other cooks and shouts him into a whimpering panic, then sentences him to spend the night scrubbing out the ovens. 

The first time he gets into a fight with another of the apprentices, he nearly melts in fear as the fight begins. After all, every fight he's been in to date has been a one-sided affair, where he does not get in a single blow and ends up a mass of bruises and split skin or worse. But he's mad, and the other boy is mad, and he's too impulsive to hold back. And before he knows it, he's got the other boy — older and bigger than him — down on his back, and he's beating on this kid the way his brothers beat on him. 

He's stronger, he realizes, and stops punching even before the cooks drag him off. _He's stronger._ On Germa he was the weakling failure, but among these boys? He's the only one who was expected to be a soldier when he grew up, who was taught to fight and subjected to grueling physical training. _He's stronger._

He'd like to say that the realization means he never gets in another fight, but it simply isn't true. As he gets over the fear that was his status quo in Germa, he begins to manifest a fiery temper, and more fights follow. He picks on the boys who are bigger than him, sturdy where he is scrawny, and he loses the fights as often as he wins them — but he only ever fights the ones who can sometimes beat him. He might be mad, and the one or two apprentices smaller than him piss him off just like the older boys and the adults do (and he pisses them off, and they piss each other off; their work is hard and everyone gets angry) — but he never lets himself beat up on someone weaker than him again. 

And despite the temper, despite the fights, despite the occasional surges of grief or panic that sometimes wash over him and leave him sobbing in a corner or clutching at fistfuls of his hair as he struggles out of nightmares — despite these moments, he's _happy_. 

Then the pirates come. 

As the _Orbit_ 's alarm bell rings furiously, the cooks tell all the apprentices that they need to head down to their sleeping quarters and _stay there._ The adult sailors arm themselves as best they can and head toward the deck to face the threat.

Sanji is furious. Although he lets himself be herded at first, his heart is blazing with a pounding fury that anyone would _dare_ interrupt the happiness and home he's found here among the crew of this ship. Somehow — through lucky coincidences and an abundance of caution on his part — no one has started to suspect anything of him so far as he knows, and they're kind to him and give him a home and a place where he has been able to thrive and grow for almost a whole year. 

He's not going to go down without a fight. 

It's not hard to slip away from the other boys, and he detours to the kitchen to arm himself before heading out toward the deck and the source of the shouting he hears. Necchi will be furious with him if he uses the good knives for anything but cooking, but he is willing to take whatever punishment gets dished out if it means his home stays safe. He grabs a pair of long, wickedly sharp fillet knives and heads up. 

It's pouring rain, and he hears the loud splintering crash of breaking wood and the shouts of a fight. As he steps into the fray, a pirate reaches for him and he lashes out with the knife, falling without thought back into the sword forms he learned so painstakingly in another life. 

But he's only a little boy, and the pirate is a man full grown — he pulls back a bleeding hand and laughs in Sanji's face, taunting him. And then it's the captain of the pirates facing him, lashing a powerful kick that sends Sanji flying, the knives falling from his hands as — once again, for the first time since he became _Sanji_ — he is completely overwhelmed by a strength far beyond his own. 

He won't back down. He _can't_. The knives are gone so he _bites_ the man's ankle, determined that if he's going to die here, at least he'll die fighting like a man.

* * *

For three months, they starve together, Sanji and the pirate captain, and Sanji's anger curdles dull and exhausted. He's torn between a lethargic acceptance that he's going to die on this rock, and a furious denial — a refusal to succumb, if only because that was Judge's prediction, that he would die from the harsh world outside Germa. 

He's not going to die. He _won't_ die, no matter how his body shrinks and his hair falls out and his vision blurs. He drinks rainwater and eats the moldy, waterlogged food bit by painful bit, until it's all gone. And then he survives, grim and angry, on nothing but the rainwater and his determination. 

And they make it. 

Sanji is in better shape than Zeff when the two of them are taken into their rescuers' infirmary, and by the time the old man is conscious enough to know what's going on, Sanji has pleaded with the medic and the nurses to call him a boy. They don't understand, but they agree, and even in his weakness he can see them inventing stories to explain his request. He doesn't care. They don't call him a girl and they feed him and treat the scrapes and sores and sunburn that have accrued and refused to heal, and that's all he can ask for. 

The ship's captain talks with them both, and Sanji listens to Zeff barter their passage and medical treatment out of the store of treasure he claimed for himself instead of food. It makes him want to cry. 

He does cry when the captain asks him where his family is, and offers to take him home. It's the first time the question has been asked of him since that day — with the crew on _Orbit_ assuming him a refugee, no one wanted to say it directly — and he's reminded all over again that he's _unwanted_. That he has no family. He can't bring himself to answer the question, only shakes his head, sniffling. 

"He's coming with me," Zeff says, and those words stop Sanji's tears, as much from shock as anything else.

* * *

_Baratie_ is beautiful. It took almost all of Zeff's treasure to get her outfitted and launched, and the very last of it to hire their first group of staff and lay in supplies. And the whole time, Sanji is right beside Zeff, proud of the restaurant and determined that he _will_ see it succeed. He owes Zeff no less. 

But he never lets himself relax around the old man, and not long after their launch, he learns that his instinct was all too right. 

"Hire a woman?" Zeff scowls at the assembled staff who have joined up in a group to confront him. "Never! I train all you idiots with my kicks, and I ain't doing that to a girl!" 

_You'd call me a girl if you knew_ , Sanji thinks in sinking dismay. By now, he has learned that Zeff is an old-fashioned man. He sneers when he sees two men dining together in what is clearly an intimate date; he watches sidelong and mutters under his breath when a woman with her hair cropped short and a dueling scar neatly slicing her cheek orders a masculine drink and tells the bartender that it better not have any damn umbrella in it. According to Zeff, women are women and men are men, and they'd better not act like anything else. 

It only hardens Sanji's determination. He _is_ a man — or he will be, when he grows up enough that he's not a little boy any longer — and knowing that Zeff would never take on a woman as staff means that Zeff had better not ever learn that Sanji is anything but what he appears to be. 

But it isn't easy, and as his next few birthdays come and go, a quiet sense of dread grows in his mind. 

He knows his body is going to change. At eight, at nine, and at ten, there was no question of passing as a boy so long as he didn't have to take his pants off. But puberty will come for him, his body will start to reshape itself, and if he's unlucky…

Well, he'd better not be. He doesn't want to lose another home. 

A woman with a startlingly deep, gravelly voice visits _Baratie_ ; later, listening to the older cooks, he learns that smoking can deepen and harshen the voice. When he learns that it can also decrease feelings of hunger, he snaps up a pack during the next supplies run and makes a dedicated attempt to pick up the habit, for all he's only twelve and Zeff yells at him it will stunt his growth and deaden his palate. 

His chest starts to develop from childish smoothness, small buds of breasts that are barely anything but seem to his horrified gaze to be enormous, jutting things that proclaim his body's nature to everyone who sees him. One night, he cuts up an old shirt to make wrappings for his chest and binds it tight enough that the next day, he is lightheaded and struggles to breathe through the day's work. It takes some experimentation to figure out how tightly he can wrap himself without wavering dangerously during the lunch rush. 

At another market stop, he lets himself be lured into a tailor shop, and learns that structured suit jackets will hide a multitude of sins — enough that he can wear his chest wrap looser, to let himself breathe a little. He spends all his savings on a tailored suit that makes him look like the kind of smooth, suave gentleman he deeply wishes to be, and he endures the mockery of the cooks who accuse him of putting on airs. It doesn't matter. He looks amazing, and more importantly, no one who sees him in this suit can think he's anything but a man. 

The first time he _notices_ one of the female patrons, his heart leaps into his throat in fear. She's a little older than him, fifteen or sixteen maybe, visiting with her parents for a celebratory dinner, and she is _beautiful_. Every motion delicate and graceful, long dark hair that curls just so against her nape and shoulders, a silky dress that sweeps around her and emphasizes her every movement… He feels a twist of longing in his chest and it terrifies him, because _what if he wants that?_ What if his lifelong determination that he is a _boy_ is suddenly falling apart? 

A hard hand claps on his shoulder, and Carne sweeps him back to the kitchen before he can string his words properly together. "Look out, Owner Zeff!" the man carols out, to Sanji's intense humiliation. "Sanji's discovering _giiiiirls_!" He stretches the word out mockingly, and Sanji goes scarlet and kicks at his knee. 

But the next time a beautiful girl catches his eye, and his heart starts to pound and all sense and reason leak out his ears, he catches the feeling and holds it tight for later examination, alone in his tiny, private cabin that evening — and with an enormous, profound surge of relief, he realizes that Carne was right. He doesn't want to _be_ these girls, in their flowing dresses and elegantly-dressed hair. He wants to look at them — wants _them_ to look at _him_ , wants them to acknowledge him and smile and tell him that the meals he's prepared for them are so delicious, oh, you must be an amazing cook, what's your name…? 

Relieved, he drifts off in a fantasy where he serves a beautiful girl the most amazing pastry she's ever tasted, and she takes his hand and tells him how wonderful he is.

* * *

As he grows up, problems present themselves. His body takes pity on him and stays rail-thin and wiry — no doubt helped by how little he eats and how much he demands for Zeff to train him — so that he doesn't have to worry about being betrayed by the curve of breast or hip. The wrappings on his chest and the layers of vest and jacket he habitually wears are enough to hide what could betray him to Zeff's eyes. But one morning, he awakens to a horrible wrenching pain low in his belly and blood in his shorts. Panicking, he stays in his room until Zeff comes and bangs on the door to tell him to get his ass to the kitchen, then yells at the old man that he's sick and staying in bed today. He can't think to do anything else, can't think past the gibbering panic in his mind. He's _bleeding_. Shit, fuck, he feels like he's _dying_. 

He stays in his room two days, claiming illness, and then joins the next market trip so that he can find a doctor. Zeff offers awkwardly to go with him, and his heart seizes with terror that the old man suspects something — but when he insists on going alone, Zeff doesn't argue, and the matter appears fully settled between them. Sanji finds the town doctor, begs the old woman for her discretion, and reveals his secret — the first time he has let anyone know both halves of his nature, heart and body, since his mother died. He feels naked in front of her, even clad in all his armorlike layers of clothing, and she eyes him with confusion and pity. 

"Young lady," she says, and his heart sinks, "I don't claim to understand why you would want to call yourself anything else. But a girl has to do what she must to survive on the sea, I suppose, and if that means calling yourself a boy, I'm not going to judge you for it." It's far from what he could have hoped for — far from even Sora's gentle, confused acceptance — but it is not a rejection, and the doctor isn't going to tell Zeff, so he can grit his teeth and accept being called a girl for the appointment, so long as it ends with him getting _help._

And help he gets. He leaves an hour later with a lecture about menstruation, six months' worth of pills to stop the damned bleeding, and a prescription for more when that runs out. And all it cost him was his pride. At least, he tells himself as he leaves the office and lights a much-needed cigarette, he isn't actually dying. 

But he's still shaken, and his belly keeps twisting itself in knots, and he's silent and withdrawn as he rejoins the market group to return to _Baratie._ His life has just gotten that much more complicated, and he hates it. Hates any reminder that his body is not what he wants it to be, cannot be what it should be. For the next few days, until the bleeding stops, he stops around the kitchen, irritable and insecure and twice as ready to flare up as normal. He needs to be recognized, needs to be seen, needs to hear that the people he spends his life with look at him and see a man, not a _young lady._

He gets it, in the form of insults and fisticuffs and Zeff's wooden leg beating him about the head. Every strike feels like a reassurance. _You're a man, you're a man, you're a man._ Zeff would never hit a girl. If Zeff's hitting him, he can't be a girl. Everything's how it should be.

* * *

It isn't only girls he notices, and after the first time a beautiful boy catches his eye and turns him stupid, he can't decide if it's more or less unnerving than being attracted to girls. Boys are _supposed_ to notice girls, aren't they? But sometimes the feeling of longing for those soft dresses or sparkling jewelry makes him fear he's losing his identity. Feeling his insides go to water around the apprentice who comes with his master to make repairs to _Baratie_ after a bad storm — that's a whole other thing, because while it's uncomplicated, a longing to both look _at_ the boy and look _like_ the boy, it also makes him wonder if he's sliding. After all, it's girls who like boys, right? 

He doesn't know what to do with himself. The repairman and his apprentice leave, and Sanji broods through the next few days, too busy chewing on his struggles of attraction to notice the world around him. 

Zeff calls him a dumbass and kicks him, Patty and Carne call him a stupid sulking idiot teenager, and he very nearly forgets to pitch his voice down the next time he tells them to go kiss the seafloor. 

The third time the repairman comes — it's been a bad season for storms — Sanji makes his move on the apprentice, and they spend a blissful hour making out in a storeroom. When it's clear the boy has more than just kissing on his mind, Sanji stops him, heart pounding in his throat with fear as much as desire, and says, quiet and uncertain, "Wait. I have something I need to tell you first." 

The boy curses him for a lying girl and spits at him, then storms out. Sanji stays where he is, sitting on a pile of rice sacks, and tries not to cry. 

The repairman never comes back, and Zeff never says a word about it. Sanji has no idea what the boy might have said, but it seems his secret has stayed safe. And his lesson is well learned — he might look at people with desire, and want them to see and acknowledge his skills and his service, he cannot trust anyone with who he really is. It is a lie to offer himself to them as a man, when his body cannot make good on that offer, and he _will not_ offer himself to anyone as a woman.

* * *

He's nineteen when the whirlwind that is the nascent Straw Hat pirate crew comes crashing into his life. Literally crashing, in Luffy's case, and although the rest follow more sedately, the impact they make on him is no less intense for it. Not that he realizes it right away, of course. It isn't until the Kreig pirates and the warlord Hawk Eyes make their joint appearances that he starts to understand what a special group this little gang is. Zoro, bleeding near to death, makes his vow to Luffy, and Luffy accepts it with perfect gravity, as though it is the most right and reasonable thing in the world. 

They're _exhilarating_ , and Sanji longs to go with them, even as he knows he can never leave _Baratie._ Zeff saved his life, and he cannot turn his back on his profound obligation to the man who sacrificed his own body so that Sanji could live. 

Until Zeff throws him out, that is. He weeps on the _Baratie_ 's broken deck, putting his face on the boards as the deepest symbol of a gratitude that words can never express. Everything he is, everything he does, everything he goes on to do on the sea, will be entirely in Zeff's hands, because without Zeff, he would be nothing — a sad little skeleton on a lonely rock. He can do no less than dedicate his life to making Zeff proud. 

Once again, he leaves his home and sets off into the unknown.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote most of this chapter at the same time I wrote Chapter 1, then kept going back and adding bits to it while I was supposed to be working on Chapter 3. So I said to myself, dude, you gotta stop doing this and just post it. It's supposed to be snippets, not an exhaustive biography! 
> 
> I apologize for any continuity problems in the _Orbit_ section. I had misremembered it as being a much larger ship with a commensurately larger crew when I wrote that bit, then went back and reread that flashback and realized my mistake. I _think_ I caught everything, but -- well, no beta we die like men. All mistakes are me being a pure dumbass.


	3. Paradise (part 1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Strawhats are family, and Sanji loves them all. But you can't always trust family with your deepest secrets.

Sanji loves his crew. 

They aren't perfect people by any means, and all of them — except Nami, of course — piss him off almost daily. (Even she comes close a few times, but a gentleman _never_ lets himself get angry at a lady, and Sanji clutches the label of _gentleman_ to his chest with all the fierceness he can muster.) Luffy is a pain in the ass, constantly underfoot and trying to steal the food; Usopp is full of shit and every tall tale feels like an insult to the intelligence of everyone except their gullible captain; Zoro is the _worst_ , absolutely unspeakable. 

But they're a crew, and as often as Luffy is a pain or Usopp cringes away from a threat or Zoro calls Sanji names, they just as often make him happy. Luffy is a wellspring of energy and verve. Usopp, when he lets himself relax enough, is an artistic genius with a hell of an eye for both beauty and opportunity. Zoro… 

Zoro makes the pit of Sanji's stomach squirm in a very familiar way, and he hates the mosshead all the more for it. He's never let himself indulge in feelings about a boy, not since the repairman's apprentice back when he was fifteen, and he's not about to break that promise to himself now — certainly not for someone he has to sail beside, day in and day out. The apprentice could leave Baratie and never come back, but if Sanji tries anything with Zoro, one or the other of them will have to leave the crew. Not worth it. 

Besides. Zoro hates him. If Sanji had to make a wild guess, the priority rank according to Zoro would be Luffy, then Zoro himself, then Usopp and Nami, and Sanji so far in dead last that he isn't even on the horizon. It makes it easy not to say anything of substance, to bicker and insult and tamp all that quiet longing far down where no one has to deal with it. 

But he can't help staring sidelong when the big green idiot isn't looking at him — can't help letting his eyes trace the line of those broad shoulders, the taper down to that narrow waist that the haramaki does nothing to camouflage. Zoro's so damn _built_ , and Sanji's both enthralled and jealous. His body will never look like that, no matter what he does. He could leave aside the kitchen and train all day just like Zoro, and he'd still have these narrow shoulders he tries to hide with his jackets, still have this body that carries him through the day while betraying him nonstop. 

It's all a muddle, and the only answer he can find is to rise to Zoro's provocations and meet them with his own. The swordsman seems to hate him, after all — so why let himself get wrapped up in any other feelings? Bickering and bullshit are a protective shell against everything else.

* * *

They cross into the Grand Line, and another woman joins the crew. Sanji is already entranced with Nami — she's something special to him, the first girl he's ever been _friends_ with, and he lavishes attention on her the way he breathes. Vivi is her own sort of special, too — a princess, and nothing like his distant memories of Reiju. Vivi is passionate and stout-hearted and sweet, and Sanji loves her. 

He's not the only one, either. The girls aren't blatant in their affections; he thinks he may be the only one who has noticed how they look at each other, how they touch each other, little slips of fingers against arms or shoulders, tiny nothings that carry the weight of a thousand unspoken words. Luffy's too dense to understand even the bare concept of Romance, and Zoro doesn't seem able to recognize or appreciate anything of the softer things in life. Usopp, maybe Usopp has noticed — he's sharp, their sniper — but he's also a dumbass and scared of Nami, so maybe he hasn't. Sanji likes to think the sweetness blossoming between Nami and Vivi is his secret to keep for them; his discretion is another gift he offers along with the drinks and sweets he prepares, the chores he does so the pair can spend more time together. 

He loves them both, but he knows he'll never be loved the way they love each other. That's okay. He'll keep doing what he does, and they'll smile at him and thank him prettily and tell him how good it is, and that is enough.

* * *

Nami falls ill soon after they leave Little Garden, and Sanji feels like his world is crumbling. He stands over her bed and cries into his sleeve, knowing that the others take him for a lovesick moron and not caring in the slightest. They've never understood what Nami means to him — he doesn't _want_ them to understand — and they don't understand what it does to him now, seeing her lie in bed, flushed and shivering and weak. 

In his mind's eye, Nami overlaps with his mother, the familiar creaking of Merry's rigging with the quiet sounds of the hospital. He remembers sitting on his mother's lap, barely daring to move lest he hurt her. She was so fragile at the end, so colorless and ephemeral. He lost her to that illness, and if they don't find a doctor for Nami, he's going to lose her too. 

Vivi is as distraught as he is, though far more composed in her unhappiness, and Sanji struggles not to add to her burden. When Luffy asks if Sanji can make good food to cure Nami, the memories take his breath away with a stunning pain, and he barely manages to stammer out something about doing his best, with a caution that food is not medicine. That, too, reminds him far too much of his mother. Her smile when he cooked for her, even though it was a terrible, untutored mishmash — no, he can't think about his mother right now, it only deepens his distress. 

Nami might get better. She _must_ get better, because they can't lose one of their precious crew. Sanji can't lose _her_ , the first girl he's ever been friends with, the first who has ever been more than a brief guest for him to serve, a passing infatuation for him to admire from afar. He can't lose her the way he lost his mother, and so he endeavors to bury himself in the galley, preparing the best food he can for her. Nutritious, easily digestible, delicious for a faltering appetite, something that will keep well at room temperature so she can pick at it when awake. 

It's Vivi who sits by her bedside and feeds her, though, and he does not compete for that position. His is the courtly love, admiration from afar that demands no response. And Vivi's… Vivi's is more than that.

* * *

With a start, Sanji awakes, flinging himself bolt-upright in alarm. He's in a too-soft bed, not his familiar hammock on Merry, and nothing is moving around him — he's on land somewhere. It's cold. 

Memory filters back slowly. Right. They stopped at the winter island, looking for a doctor for Nami. He and Luffy set out with her to get to the doctor's castle high on the mountain. Then there were the rabbit monsters. Then the avalanche. The last thing he remembers is trying to fling Luffy and Nami clear before the snow crashed down around him. 

He raises a hand to his chest and panics. His coat is gone — his _shirt_ is gone — he's wearing nothing but bandages from the waist up, and _shit, fuck_ that means that someone has seen what he keeps hidden. Someone — whatever doctor treated him — they _know_. He pulls the blanket tight around himself and buries his face in his hands, hyperventilating. 

"Oh, you're awake." 

He leaps half out of his skin and stares around wildly. In the doorway to the room — stone, he sees, all stone around him, and that sets off a whole cascade of feelings he _cannot handle right now_ — stands an old woman, her face a mass of wrinkles but her stance and body language strong and unyielding. 

"You're damned lucky to be alive," the woman continues as she steps fully into the room and closes the door behind her. "If I weren't a damned good doctor, you'd be paralyzed at best. That was a cracked spine you had there, girlie." 

"Don't call me that!" Sanji snaps, his mind whirling with panic. He can't absorb everything the woman — the doctor — is saying. His spine? Lucky to be alive? All he can respond to is that last word. _Girl._ He's not. He's _not._

"Yeah, yeah, suit and tie, I saw." The woman gives him a sharp look. "I don't care if you're some kind of onabe, you know. Your friend busted his ass to get you here, so I treated you. That's all that matters to me." 

"Whatever." Sanji doesn't relax — if anything, the mention of Luffy locks his muscles even tighter. "My friends — there should be two of them. A boy and a girl. Are they here?" _Nami-san_ , his mind cries out. _Please be all right!_

"Ah, yes. Her." The old woman let out a cackling laugh. "You got to me just in time, you three! That's a deadly disease she has there, and very difficult to cure. Another couple days and she'd be a cold corpse. But she's on the mend now, thanks to me." 

Sanji draws a deep breath. "Thank you," he says, through teeth he carefully does not grit. He feels naked in front of this woman, still terrified that he could be revealed — and furious that he's so terrified. But Nami's going to be okay, and that's more important. The worst that can happen to him is Luffy and the others deciding he can't be one of them any more. The worst that could happen to Nami is a horrible death. He knows his priorities. "For saving her. Thank you." 

Another cackle. "Oh, you hate thanking me, don't you, girlie?"

"Stop _fucking_ calling me that! I'm not a girl!" He doesn't normally talk to women this way — it's certainly no act of a gentleman to do so — but this crone is driving him shit-crazy, and it's been all of three minutes. "And where's my damn shirt?" Dimly, he hears Luffy's voice from the other side of the door and flinches. He's not leaving this bed until he can be properly covered up. 

"I've got your shirt right here. But why don't you tell me a few things first — like your name, so I can stop calling you gir-"

" _Sanji_ ," he snaps, nearly vibrating out of his skin. She might be old and mocking and rude, but she's still a woman. He _has_ to be a gentleman. Zeff's lessons, drummed into his soul with painful kicks, hold firm — there are certain ways a man must treat a woman. If you don't abide by them, you're no man. He knows the old geezer wasn't saying it the way he's taken it, but it doesn't matter. If it would have been a normal sort of true if he'd been born properly, it's only even more true with the way he is. "My name is Sanji." 

"Sanji, then." She folds her arms. "If you're not a girl, then what are you, hm? And remember, I had you on the operating table, so don't think you can bullshit me." 

"I'm…" He glowers at the reminder. "I'm a man. It doesn't matter what my body looks like. That's what I _am._ " 

"Huh. I suppose it takes all kinds to make a world. If you-" She cuts off at a loud howl from the other side of the door. It's Luffy, with his familiar refrain. 

" _Meat!!_ " 

With a growl, the doctor tosses Sanji's shirt to him and turns to leave. "Well, get dressed then. It sounds like your friend is causing trouble out there." 

"Wait." Sanji gestures, pleading. "Don't… don't tell them, okay? I don't want anyone to know." 

"Suit yourself. It's none of my business anyway." And with that, the old woman is gone.

* * *

Not long after the Straw Hat Pirates sail away from Drum Island one doctor richer, Chopper calls each of them in turn into the storage area he has claimed as a makeshift infirmary. If he's going to be their doctor, he says — striving for professional firmness and landing just shy of it in purely adorable territory — then he needs to know what he's starting with, so he can treat them better when they're injured or sick. 

Sanji's not happy about it, but he already knows that Chopper assisted Kureha in treating him, so there's nothing left for him to hide; he can only hope that Chopper's sense of discretion is better than his ability to prevaricate. He sits in the storeroom and speaks, low and quiet, about the medicine he takes to stop his cycle and about how he hides himself from the others. 

"I can't say this is something Dr. Hiriluk or Doctorine ever prepared me for," Chopper admits quietly. "But I believe you, Sanji, about who you are. And those pills — you can keep taking those if you want. They've worked for you for years now, it sounds like. But I can also make you something similar that might have fewer side effects, if you want to try that. Or as a backup, if you ever run out of the pills." 

It's a vote of confidence, and Sanji pats Chopper's head with a smile. He looks so damned cute; no one on board can resist the little guy, not even grim Zoro. Putting on his best professional face only makes him more appealing. "Thanks, Chopper," he says, and means it. "Just… don't say anything about it to the others, all right? I don't want things to get weird." That's an understatement, but it's all he really needs to say; no reason to upset Chopper by talking about the possibility of getting hounded out of the men's quarters or thrown off the crew altogether as a freak.

* * *

In Alabasta, they meet Luffy's older brother, and Sanji feels a familiar yearning in the pit of his stomach. _Fuck_. Ace is beautiful in a honed masculine way that tightens his chest with envy even as he admires him. And more than that — he's charming. His manners are practiced but unpolished, clearly the result of great effort, and he willingly volunteers to help Sanji clean up, making his offer with a crooked smile that leaves Sanji's heart pounding in his chest. 

He's amazing. Sanji can feel that yearning set up in his chest, the same desire that he has so relentlessly quashed ever since that awful day in _Baratie_ 's storage room. And once again, he needs to strangle it down. Ace is certainly less dangerous than a member of the crew, but he's Luffy's _brother_. If anything could dim Luffy's enthusiasm for Sanji as his cook, it would be his adored other brother telling him Sanji's a — those words haunt him. _Filthy lying girl._

Zoro seems to take a dislike to Ace; Sanji notices, dimly, that any time he and Ace are talking, even a casual word in passing, the swordsman glowers at them both. He's stiff with Ace when they speak, no matter how much Ace turns on the bright charm. One time, when Ace lays a hand on Sanji's wrist when thanking him for dinner (oh, he's so _warm_ in the chilly desert evening), Zoro takes it on himself to interrupt. "Oi, cook! I want more booze!" 

"Asshole," Sanji mutters under his breath. 

"Don't let me hold you back, Sanji-san," Ace says. "I wouldn't want to get in the way of taking care of your crew. That's the sign of a really good chef, after all…" And something in his eyes goes dark and sad and full of pain. 

Sanji would much rather keep talking to Ace than scramble to obey Zoro's peremptory demand, but he hears another "Oi! I know there's enough to last, come on!" and sighs. 

"Later, Ace, all right?" And he tells himself it means nothing when Ace gives him another broad, crooked grin — the pain sliding away as though it was never there — and Sanji's stomach fills with butterflies.

* * *

They leave Vivi behind in Alabasta, and Sanji can see the grief written clearly in Nami's eyes. He's sad too — they're all sad, even Zoro in his own brutish way seems a little affected — but Vivi and Nami had (have, will always have) something special, something the rest of them did not share. _Love_ , that's what they had. The kind of reciprocated, fully mutual feeling he knows cannot be his. Supporting their little intimacies, knowing and saying nothing, he feels that he could at least touch the outer surface of what he'll never have for himself. 

(He broods on it more than he ought; Ace's brief presence and equally quick departure bring out something in him. The words play in his head over and over the way they haven't for years. _Filthy lying girl._ ) 

But when one nakama leaves, another joins them, and Sanji is _enchanted_ with Robin. There is an air of tragedy that rests lightly on her shoulders like an invisible cloak, and his newfound dearest ambition is to see her smile with genuine warmth. It is all too clear, even in the beginning when she reveals little of herself to her new crew, that there is great unkindness in her past — and Sanji likes to imagine that perhaps, he can understand her a little better than the others. That he knows what she needs. 

He calls her Robin- _chan_ , despite her age — defiant of it, because she deserves the closeness and trust that come with such a soft honorific. He serves her the things she likes, takes the time to watch her reactions to every dish he makes and every drink he mixes, to see what she likes best without interrogating her for her preferences. He notices the way she subtly and silently assists the crew, a hand springing out of nowhere at just the right moment to catch a dropped nail, to rescue Luffy's hat as it's about to blow off his head, to hold onto everyone on deck in rough seas. She watches them the way he watches her, looking for opportunities to serve. 

It gives him a great feeling of kinship with her, but makes him a little nervous as well. Of all of them, she is perhaps the most deliberately observant; if anyone is going to figure him out, he thinks, it will be her — not any of the men he shares quarters with. Robin-chan is _clever_. 

Not that it stops him from lavishing her with gentlemanly attention. Every smile is a gift, every moment when the darkness behind her eyes lightens just a little is a triumph. 

And then they encounter the Marine Admiral, Aokiji, and Sanji witnesses the mysteries behind Robin's eyes turn to pure fear. The man taunts her, flings words designed to split her apart from the crew — to sow distrust among them. Sanji won't believe it — refuses to believe a single insinuating word Aokiji says, even as some deep tactical part of his mind notes that it's not impossible for it all to be true. 

Although Aokiji professes no interest in fighting them, he seems to talk himself around to it — and they find themselves utterly outclassed by his powers with ice. Quietly, Sanji finds himself wishing Ace had kept traveling with them — what he wouldn't give for a man made of fire right now! But he's not here, and they will do their best. 

When Luffy orders him and Zoro to retreat and unfreeze their limbs, the two of them are for once not divided, not bickering. They trade glances that speak the same silent language, anguish at leaving their captain with this powerful foe. At the time, there is no room for anything but focus on the enemy, but later, when the admiral is long gone and they have Robin unthawed, Sanji thinks about that feeling of connection with Zoro — that sense of being in complete accord with him, the two of them their captain's left and right hands. 

He likes it an awful lot. Maybe too much. He hasn't been able to fight down his sense of attraction to the swordsman, only balance it enough with irritation to keep himself from doing anything stupid. This… 

This might tip him over the line.

* * *

They rest a few days by Long Ring Long Land, and Sanji endeavors to lavish as much attention on Robin as she will accept. Without doing anything so crass as openly telling her that she is one of them — for he knows that saying it too openly will only serve to paradoxically stir doubt — he instead _shows_ her, or hopes he does, that she is a treasured part of their crew and that he trusts her absolutely. He makes her warm drinks and warm food to heal the ice that nearly stopped her heart; he makes her his number-one priority, ready to drop anything he's doing the moment she looks like she might even have a thought about perhaps wanting something.

But she's not the only one he's thinking about, either. 

Zoro weighs on his mind too; that moment when Luffy ordered them to retreat, when they existed on the same plane of instinct and thought and protest. It isn't the first time that has happened. It's a stupid thing to think of — he can hear Zeff's voice in his mind, calling him an idiot dreamer, lost in a romantic cloud — but he can't help assigning _meaning_ to those moments. Maybe they don't have to be nothing to each other but irritants. Maybe they could be more. Maybe that powerful sense of completion he feels when they face foes together could carry over beyond battle. 

_And maybe giving yourself away to him will have you thrown off the crew, stupid!_ He can't jeopardize his place here. He loves this crew so damn much — every one of them, each in their own special way. What will he do if they turn against him for being what he is — what he isn't? 

Fear and desire war within him. Zoro of all of them is the least compromising, the least sympathetic. But the connection Sanji feels with him has been so strong in those moments where it has made itself known. 

The day before they leave, Zoro corners him in the galley. It's a bright, sunny day, and the others are out on deck enjoying the weather. Inside, it's just the two of them. Sanji feels some tension crawl up his spine; there's determination in the set of Zoro's arched brows. Is this going to be some kind of argument? A fight? "No booze til dinner," he snipes, trying to cover his tension with a standard opening to a bickering match. 

"Cook," Zoro says, and something in his voice is… odd. Were it anyone but their swordsman, Sanji would say he sounds uncertain — but Roronoa Zoro, the Pirate Hunter, doesn't _do_ uncertainty. He does rude, he does brusque, he does determined, but this new mood of his is something else altogether. 

And damn it all, even that is fucking appealing. It's so damned _human_ is what it is, like Zoro's a flesh-and-blood mortal instead of a statue of stone and steel. Like he could actually accept someone's touch. 

_Shit. Shit. Don't go there!_ He learned his lesson years ago. He can't let it slip now! But when he turns to look at Zoro, the man is staring at him with a furrowed intensity that makes his heart start beating triple-time. 

Their eyes meet, and for a long moment, Zoro simply stares at him, intense, searching; Sanji stares back, feeling trapped by that dark gaze — unable, un _willing_ to look away. He can barely breathe. Nothing exists but the two of them here, the dig of the counter into Sanji's back and the thunder of his heart in his ears — and Zoro. 

Slowly, so slowly, Zoro steps in closer, closer, until Sanji could reach out and touch him if he could just make his limbs move. 

"You feel it too," he rumbles, low and dark. Sanji has to lick his lips, has to find some way to summon his voice back from the paralysis that strikes him. He swallows, nods. 

"Yeah." It's barely a breath of a word. He can't _think_. 

Then Zoro closes the last of the distance between them, and hard lips press to Sanji's, and _oh shit._

_Oh shit, Zoro is kissing him._

It's good. It's so damned good. It's firm and hungry without being demanding, straightforward as Zoro is straightforward, no bullshit, no indirectness. Zoro kisses like he does everything else, without fanfare but with thorough, singleminded purpose, and Sanji is drowning. He can't resist — doesn't want to — no, wants _more_ , and he reaches up to clasp one hand at the back of Zoro's head, holding him in place, curling his fingers in the green hair he's mocked since the day they met and has quietly, secretly, always wanted to _touch._

It's soft. 

Zoro's hair is so goddamn soft, and his kiss is so hard, and Sanji never wants him to let go. Tries to devour Zoro just as Zoro is devouring him, and he'd happily let himself get swept away in realized desire — 

Until Zoro's hand worms between them, fumbling with the buttons of his jacket, and his blood turns to ice. 

_No!_ No, he can't, how could he be so stupid? They can't do this. He can't let Zoro touch him, can't let his secret be revealed. He tears himself away — can't lurch backward, not trapped as he is, so he shoves off against Zoro's broad, masculine chest, earns himself only enough space to get a leg up between them — kicks Zoro back, locking his arms around himself. 

"Stop!" He can't look at him. His face is burning with shame and his belly is tight with lust and he _can't do this._ "Get the fuck out, marimo!" 

"But-" A single word of protest, no more, tight and strangled and so damned confused. Sanji feels like shit. Still can't look at him. Silence falls, Zoro staring at Sanji, Sanji staring at the wall. His head hurts, and he realizes he's got a fistful of his own hair, pulling hard. 

Finally, Zoro lets out a hard breath. "... Fine. I understand." Sanji listens to his footsteps retreat out to the deck, and it isn't until he's left alone that he can slide to his knees, shaking. In avoiding one disaster, he's caused another. What is he going to do now?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I was PLANNING to do all of Paradise as one chapter, but got this far, looked at how much I still had left to write before we hit the New World, and realized that was a very foolish plan. So, we're 5 chapters now and part 2 of Paradise will be forthcoming!
> 
> "Onabe" is the AFAB equivalent of "okama" -- as I understand, it encompasses everything from butch women to gender-nonconforming or nonbinary AFAB to trans men.


	4. Paradise (part 2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When the fabric of the crew is tested at Water 7, Zoro and Sanji find themselves pulled together as the crew stalwarts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note the ratings bump!

They sail on to Water 7. Zoro attempts to bicker with Sanji as he always does, and Sanji attempts to return the sniping as he always does, but their rhythm of insults and provocations is lost. The two of them verbally stagger around each other, playacting at normalcy and failing miserably. Sanji knows the others have noticed — he has caught Nami and Usopp both looking at them sidelong during another pathetic attempt to fight it out. Luffy probably notices nothing — but then, what does Luffy ever notice? Their captain's behavior hasn't changed, hanging on Sanji and demanding food, but Sanji feels claustrophobic, as though every touch might betray him. 

Robin is withdrawn, silent, trapped in her own mind. The encounter with that Marine has shaken something deep in her, and Sanji's heart aches to see her suffer so. 

At Water 7, things go from bad to worse. Their money gets stolen. _Merry_ is unfixable — fundamentally broken. Usopp and Luffy trade bitter words, then blows, and Usopp leaves the crew. Then Robin leaves as well, with last haunting words for Sanji. _Goodbye forever…_

The Straw Hat Pirates are now wanted — wanted _here_ , not just in the general way of the Marines, but actively hunted here in Water 7 — for attempted murder, and Sanji finds himself paradoxically grateful that he's not one of the ones with a bounty yet. No one has a picture of him to hunt for. He and Chopper can move about the city more or less freely, and he takes comfort in the reindeer's presence — he can relax a little when he's alone with Chopper, knowing that he doesn't need to hide anything from him. Not that it changes his behavior — no, he acts the same as he always has, because he is himself. This is who he is, the sea cook who thinks too much and not enough, who calculates every gesture and expression, who hides his body beneath suits and gentlemanly manners. 

But even so, he relaxes a little — at least at first. At least until things go from bad to worse. 

They are in a dire situation. _Robin_ is in a dire situation. Still, in some ways, he feels as though his head has cleared as he slips onto the sea train just before it pulls out of the port altogether. He may be soaking wet and on a train filled with enemies, but thoughts of Zoro and that kiss in the galley have faded away. He can think about those later; for now, there is only one goal, and that is to get Robin to safety. He revels in that purity of purpose. It's like cooking — when he's in his element, everything else falls away. There are no worries, no interpersonal concerns. When he faces down a train car filled with government officers, he isn't afraid to hear anyone say _miss_ or _girlie_ or anything else. It doesn't _matter_. They're not assessing him as a man or a woman. They're assessing him as a _threat_ , and as a threat is how he faces them. 

He finds Usopp and that gangster Franky in one of the cars, and sets them free, then makes his promised call to Nami to report in. In the background, he hears Zoro — _Hey, tell him to wait for us! Cook, do you hear me? Those guys are dangerous!_ — and the purity of purpose slips away a little. His feelings toward Zoro are so powerful, and so powerfully mixed, and he _cannot afford that_ right now. Later, when this is all over — later, he can decide what he's going to do about the swordsman. But that will depend on them all coming back safely from the Judicial Island, and that's one hell of a gamble. 

He makes it a tease. "Ah, is Marimo-kun worried for me?" and enjoys Zoro's incensed response. It's blessedly normal, and he feels his wavering soul stabilize. He can do this. He will do this. Anything else will come later.

* * *

It's a grueling fight up the length of the sea train — and at the end of it, they fail. Sanji's heartbreak at seeing Robin calmly and complacently submit to the Marines, even turning against Usopp ("Sogeking," fine, whatever, he's not fooling anyone) is unspeakable, and he greets Luffy and the others with a smile of relief, rather than joy. Being adrift in a damaged train car is no good thing. 

He tells the assembled group everything that happened on the train — everything Robin has said and done. And at the end, he acknowledges soberly that he failed. That he returned to the group lacking both her and Franky is — well, he can't say that it's because he wasn't strong enough. Rather, it is a failure of his ability to persuade her — a failure of his nakamaship. Robin did not choose to come with him. All the kindness he has shown her, all his attempts from the beginning to ensure that she felt a part of them, that she felt _worthwhile_ to them, they have all been in vain. She has still chosen to leave them, still decided in the end that she is not a part of them. She has chosen instead to accept the fate the Marines have laid upon her. 

It's hard to hold onto, and Nami's visible distress only upsets him more. He has not only failed Robin, but Nami as well — he has failed all of them. 

But this is no time to wallow in his insufficiency. They are on the way to get her back. When she sees that her self-sacrifice has not sent them away, perhaps she'll change her mind. After all — after all, she's probably expecting them to behave like most pirates, right? Devil take the hindmost and all that. But that isn't the Straw Hat way. They will never accept the sacrifice of a companion. 

They will fight to the last man (not-man) to save her.

* * *

As they fling themselves into the fray, Sanji finds one great gift of this battle. Whatever lies unsettled between him and Zoro — and oh, it looms large in his mind! — has been neatly and fully set aside. As they fight, they move shoulder to shoulder or back to back, neatly falling into the same bickering rhythm that they've always had. The disconnect that dogged their interactions from Long Ring Long Land to Water 7 is not of the here and now. It will return — he knows that, accepts it — but it is _unimportant_ in the face of a threat to their nakama. 

_At least we have this,_ he tells himself. _Even if I ruined everything else._

They stand together as the blind, desperately wounded Gomorrah lurches forward in a mad rush, the great creature giving its all to help them. And here, on its back, surrounded by foes, Sanji feels himself at one with Zoro. They have a perfect understanding, warriors and nakama side by side. 

"Do you see a wall?" Zoro asks. 

"I don't see a wall," Sanji answers, and feels Zoro tense beside him as his own muscles bunch in preparation for the blow they will strike together. Power uncoils, stone shatters, and he thinks to himself, _Maybe…_

There's not a lot of time to think as they pound their way pell-mell into Enies Lobby, but after they get past the mass of lower-level Marine grunts and split up into the great tower itself, he finds he can — not slow down, not really, for there is no decrease in the urgency of their fight, but he can be more thoughtful in his actions and his considerations. He can regain some measure of control, at least. 

That is, until he runs into that beautiful secretary of Iceburg's. 

Zeff's voice rings loud and clear in his head. _Any man that harms a woman is no man at all. If you fail as a man, I'll slice your damn balls off, then slit my own throat in shame!_

He can't hurt her. He cannot lay a hand on her. His life was purchased with Zeff's flesh and blood; how can he betray the fundamental ideals that Zeff stands for? If he goes against his mentor's morals, he might as well have died on that rock. 

(If he strikes her, he proclaims himself no man at all. Then what will he be?) 

He's trapped. On the one hand, the burning need to rescue Robin. On the other, the identity he has fought so hard for and the moral code that has been the center of his life for a decade. He is trapped, and caught on the horns of his dilemma, he can do nothing but try to evade Khalifa's attacks, failing a little more each time as her devil fruit power wears down his defense. 

It's with a guilty shame that he turns that battle over to Nami and accepts her previous opponent instead. He hates admitting weakness — hates admitting that there is an enemy he cannot face — but in the equation between taking one foe over another versus all the morals Zeff ingrained in him… well, there's only one choice he can make. If he had left his honor in the dust and struck that woman, he'd never be able to live with himself.

* * *

It's over. It's _over._ They've won. They have Robin back. And in the end, _Merry_ saves them one last time. 

They cry for her, all together as one. There is no shame in these tears, no weakness; they all loved _Merry_ and will continue to hold her in their hearts. 

Back in Water 7, they rest. All of them, the whole crew, they're exhausted. This battle took everything they had and more — taught them to reach deeper within themselves than they ever previously have, to find more strength to carry on. It is worth it — none of them would deny for a moment that the pain and fear and exhaustion are a fair price for the life of a nakama. But, for the moment, they have little left in the way of reserves, physical or mental — and, of course, they have no ship. 

Sanji gets less rest than the others. Luffy is starved, and it's his job to make sure his captain never goes hungry. He cooks and cooks in the quarters that Galley-La granted them, and Luffy does little but sleep and eat for two days. Cooking is good — when he's cooking, he doesn't have to think so much. Luffy may be an endless black hole who would eat dirt if not watched, but Sanji's own nature requires him to serve his captain excellent food anyway. He can't relax his standards just because Luffy's are low. 

Zoro has vanished. Not in a dangerous way, but he said he was going out to meditate and it's been — well, Sanji thinks it might have been yesterday that the mosshead left. Not surprising, is it? That's how he is. (He's not worried, shut up.) It affords Sanji a little space, Zoro's absence, and he can think. He can turn over and over that kiss in Merry's galley, their disjointed relations since then, up until battle called and they found themselves once again in perfect accord. What does it mean? What could it become? It feels so _right_ to fight alongside Zoro. 

(It felt so right to kiss him.) 

Luffy's grandfather — _Garp the Fist_ , it's insane, and yet nothing less would befit their mad captain — arrives in a whirlwind of dramatic news, and Zoro returns at the same time, looking calmer and more settled. Sanji, too, feels calmer. He has, he thinks, found an answer. 

When Luffy calls for a feast, Sanji answers the call, cooking more and more until he feels he's about to drop. It's fine. It's more than fine. What he spends in energy, cooking and cooking, he receives back tenfold in praise. He is loved. 

And as the feast winds down and Sanji's cooking duties with it, he catches Zoro watching him. The swordsman's expression is unreadable, and Sanji understands. It has to be now. The feelings he's been turning over and over since that day need to be honestly discussed, no matter how little he and Zoro are genuine with each other. They can't continue without seeing this properly handled. So he meets Zoro's gaze, acknowledges him, and jerks his head off to the side, away from the site of the party. 

They need to do this — but they need to do it privately. Space for Sanji to be honest, space for Zoro to react as he will. In the aftermath of saving Robin and losing Usopp, Sanji feels new confidence that he won't be cast out of the crew — not for this. He has seen what it will and what it won't take to stop being a Straw Hat Pirate. 

Zoro stands and follows him immediately. Sanji doesn't know whether to be pleased or not. Now that he's decided to do this, he feels his gut tighten with fear. He won't be cast out of the crew — but that means that he will have to live with Zoro knowing his truth. There will be no escape. 

They walk silently into the darkness for a little while, Zoro close behind him, before Sanji feels their isolation to be enough. He doesn't want Luffy to come bursting in on them in the middle of this, looking for more food. This is just the two of them, and delicate moments will shatter in Luffy's hands. 

Finally, he turns and faces Zoro, and searches for the right words to start. 

"About — back then. What happened." How is it so hard to say it directly? But he thinks the swordsman understands, and that's a mercy. He doesn't have to try to describe it. 

"Listen, cook. You don't have to explain yourself." Zoro leans against one of the walls that tower around them in the dark, stained with the Aqua Laguna's passing, and folds his arms. "You're into women. I get that." 

"It isn't — it's not like that," Sanji says, feeling a little twist of distress. For Zoro to think himself unwanted… no. "It isn't what you think."

"No?" One angular brow lifts in open skepticism. "Seemed pretty clear to me." 

"Shut up. You don't know anything!" _No, no, no._ This isn't how he needs to react to this. Zoro's right to be hurt and defensive. Sanji clenches his fists, draws a deep slow breath through his nose, tries to calm himself down. It's not easy. There's so much riding on this and he's _afraid_. To reveal himself to someone who means this much to him — it's like leaping blind off a cliff into dark water. Once he leaps, there is no retracting the decision, even if he realizes that the water is shallow and filled with rocks on the way down. Admit his truth, and nothing can be the same between them ever again. 

Zoro watches him, and when he glances back at the swordsman, he sees an unaccustomed patience there. It gives him a fragment of hope, enough courage to keep going. 

"It's… it isn't that I didn't want it," he says slowly, more nakedly honest than he thinks he's been since the day he pressed his forehead to Baratie's deck and thanked Zeff in tears for his life. "You could tell that, right? That was… that was good. I enjoyed it." His face is burning. Why did he get himself into this? 

"But you _didn't_ want it," Zoro prompts — not a contradiction, not really, and Sanji can feel the difference. 

He looks down at his hands. Remembers the softness of Zoro's green hair. He wants to touch it again. "... Not… not like that." He draws a deep breath. It's time to leap off the cliff. "There's… there's something you should know about me, before we do anything like that. And at that time… it meant I couldn't let you." 

Zoro says nothing, only watches Sanji with more patience than Sanji thinks he could have shown were their positions reversed. 

It's all on him. No prompting. No pushing. Zoro simply waits to see what he'll say, and Sanji folds his arms against his chest — suddenly, acutely conscious of the bindings around his ribs, of his small breasts pressed as flat as he can manage beneath. He's searching for words, trying to find a way to express what has always been inexpressible in his life. 

He has to look away before he speaks. "I'm not a man. Not really." It feels like the most profound betrayal of everything he has held dear since childhood, of everything he has fought against the world to be. But how else can he describe himself? 

The swordsman is silent, and Sanji risks a sidelong glance at him. Those arched brows have drawn together, a small furrow between them, but Zoro doesn't look angry. _He doesn't look angry._

Silence reigns between them for a few moments, as Sanji catches his breath from the enormity of his admission. 

Finally, Zoro speaks, slow and measured, his words chosen with clear and evident care. "I think I know what you mean by that, cook. But these things, it's better not to assume. Tell me everything." 

Sanji's breath leaves him in a rush, a sigh of profound relief. There is no anger in Zoro's tone — no fury of deceit, no betrayal. But at the same time, for Zoro to say he know what Sanji means, just from that single statement — did he already suspect? Has Sanji's ferocious privacy, his ferocious assumption of complete manhood, been insufficient in their close quarters? 

_Everything_ is too much — far too much, and of necessity covers things he has sworn not to speak of. But he can at least outline, in a rough way, what it is that Zoro needs to know. That his soul is a man's, his heart is a man's, but his body… as much as it pains him to say it, and he knows Zoro can read him well enough to read that discomfort, his body is a woman's. That while he offers his affections freely, he can never allow anyone close to him — never allow anyone to touch him without knowing first what it is they will find. 

He does not say it outright, but every word he chooses is laden with the fear of rejection, with the fear that he will find himself once again without a home or a family. 

And Zoro _listens._ Zoro fucking listens to every word, and since when does the lazy moss-headed lump ever actually listen to Sanji? What is this madness? 

Whatever it is, it's beyond his wildest hopes for how this conversation might go, and how any of his nakama finding out might go. His heart is pounding with _possibility_. 

Finally, when Sanji finishes speaking, Zoro nods. "I've met people like that before," he says simply, "And… you know, it's not something I've ever felt, but that's okay. You're still you, cook." 

_Met people like that before?_ The possibility of _others_ makes Sanji's head swim. That he might have company in this hellish half existence, that he is not a solitary freak in Zoro's eyes, but one of a small and rare company? His world turns a slow and lazy flip on its head. 

Now Zoro reaches out to him. It isn't in their casual, rough semi-violence, nor in the intensity of passion that had marked the abortive moment in the galley. Instead, it's something new between them. Something almost — if anything — like the way Sanji treats Robin, with understanding and openness but without intrusion. Callused fingers brush the back of his hand lightly, and that is all Zoro presumes to touch. 

"This doesn't change anything in my eyes," the swordsman says. "What was true before… that's still true, too." Indirect words, but the slight roughness in them tells Sanji what he means. That desire that he allowed to show itself then, in that single hard, hot kiss — that's still there, too. 

He looks up at Zoro, and turns his hand over to let his fingertips touch Zoro's palm in an equally light acknowledgement. The relief is too strong to hide, even between them where tender and vulnerable emotions aren't expressed. 

"Nothing at all?" 

And Zoro says, "No, nothing. Only… thank you. For telling me." _For trusting me._

* * *

They do nothing but talk during that quiet confession, and Sanji is silently grateful. He thinks if Zoro pushes him, he'll give in; to know, to _feel_ down to his marrow that Zoro sees him no differently, that Zoro still truly wants him despite his… _difference_ — but some times are only for talking, and there's no hint from the swordsman of anything more. Not til they've left Water 7. 

Usopp rejoins them at the last possible second, and a tension that has held the whole crew in a tight fist is released. A mask and a false identity are all well and good to walk that stupid balance between pride and shame when they're in the extremity of the stuation, but it's unsustainable, and Sanji cannot deny that his heart is gladdened with the sniper's true return. 

(It does not escape his notice that Franky, in designing _Sunny_ , built a place for Usopp even when Usopp was separated from them. He's older than the rest of them, and Sanji thinks under the noisy and brash exterior, Franky truly does carry an insight given him by those years of experience.) 

He's enraptured with the galley, and not shy about showing it. It's state of the art in every imaginable way — better, even! — and he feels like a king holding court whenever it's time to serve his nakama. He's in his element, and sees no reason not to display his joy through every action he takes. They have Usopp back, they have Robin back, they have a new nakama who will keep them sailing through the worst the Grand Line can throw at them, and while the loss of _Merry_ is a terrible wound, _Sunny_ is a marvel truly fit for the future Pirate King. 

It's not long after they leave Water 7, bound for Fishman Island, that matters between him and Zoro intensify. 

The swordsman comes to him while he is in the pantry attached to the galley; before he even turns around to look at the man, Sanji can feel the tension in the air, so much like that day after the Davy Back fight. He knows what is going to happen, and a frisson of nervous excitement races up his spine. Zoro knows the truth now — knows what he is — and still, here he is… 

He stands and faces the swordsman, and is not at all surprised to see the hunger in those dark eyes. 

"Cook," Zoro rumbles, and Sanji's heart pounds in his chest with eagerness. He tilts his head, letting a slow smirk tug the corners of his mouth. 

"C'mere," is all he has to say in return. 

In an instant, Zoro is on him — one hand heavy in his hair, the other on his hip, and Zoro's toned body pressing him back against the wall. He's trapped here, and not at all afraid. When Zoro's mouth crashes against his, Sanji meets him with equal ardor, and his hands trace down to Zoro's hips, just under the edge of his haramaki, pulling him close. Zoro _knows_ now and that means he doesn't have to hold back, doesn't have to fret or fear his response. He's free to delve into this, free to act. 

Zoro, he discovers, doesn't so much kiss as he _devours_. Breathtakingly intense, hungry, all-consuming. It's amazing. He feels desirable in a way he never has before. He's _wanted_ , so intensely, by someone who knows him so well. 

But knowing, he finds, doesn't mean fully feeling. When Zoro's hands come to fumble with his jacket buttons — the same thing that had him shoving away the swordsman before — he finds himself freezing again, his heart pounding in his throat. Instinct is a messy creature, and telling himself that this time is different, this time he has nothing left to hide — it doesn't help nearly as much as he thinks it should. 

But he's not going to push Zoro away again. He's _not_ , damn it. So instead, he sinks to his knees. If having Zoro touch him is still too much — still too nerve-wracking — that's no excuse to leave the man unfulfilled. 

He's never done this before. Never gotten even nearly this far. Never — if he's honest with himself — thought he ever would. But he likes to read erotic magazines, and he's got quite the imagination, and he's sure he can manage. Zoro certainly doesn't complain as Sanji works his heavy, coarse trousers open and pulls him free of them.

He can't deny the envy that clogs his throat as his fingers wrap around Zoro's stiffening cock. _I should have this._ He feels empty and blank between his legs, unfinished. A tiny nothing of a nub where he should have a sturdy shaft like the one in his hands. But what they're doing right now isn't about him, and it's a familiar enough feeling that he can push it to the back of his mind and think about Zoro instead. 

He leans forward and drags his tongue over the flared head, and takes a proud pleasure in the sudden grip of callused fingers in his hair.

" _Shit_ , cook," Zoro sighs, and it isn't an insult this time. It's _praise_ , and with a sudden visceral slam of desire, Sanji feels reborn. He has never heard anything so good. 

He applies himself with a will, remembering every overheated scene of pleasure and indulgence he's ever read or fantasized about. Everything he has believed to the bottom of his heart he will never have the chance to try for himself. Now he can — now he _will_ , because if there is any guiding light of his life, it is to serve. To give. 

His heart is racing and he doesn't know what the future will hold — doesn't know if letting Zoro so close could be the beginning of a catastrophe — but he is determined on this, that tonight will be engraved in the mossball's mind for the rest of his stupid, sweaty _life_. 

Under his attentions, Zoro groans, rocking his hips forward in small motions that seem entirely instinctive; Sanji can't be sure that's so, with the way the swordsman always seems to so thoroughly control his body, but it's pleasing nonetheless, to think that he might have such power over the man like this. To give him this pleasure, to hold him in his hand and mouth, feeling his pulse throb under velvety-hard skin. 

And then Zoro pulls him off — not roughly, the hand in his hair too careful to be anything but wholly deliberate, but _pulls him off_ and Sanji can't help a low whine of disappointment in the back of his throat. Why…? 

He looks up — Zoro looks down at him, lips parted, tan face deeply flushed, eyes wide and dark with pleasure, and Sanji can't for the life of him understand _why_ Zoro's not letting him continue. But he's held away, and now Zoro tugs again, urging him to his feet. 

"C'mere, cook." 

"You were close," Sanji protests, frowning, and Zoro nods. 

"Too close. I'm not gonna —" He trails off, leaving his intention vague, but pulls Sanji up into a brutally demanding kiss, hard enough to take his breath away, and pushes him back against the pantry wall again, crowding him in and leaving him shuddering in helpless desire. 

It's so good. It's all so good. Allowing himself to be here — allowing himself to be _touched_ by someone who knows just what he is and wants him anyway. He feels drunk on it, drunk on the taste of Zoro's mouth, drunk on having taken Zoro's cock in his hands and his mouth. On having given him pleasure, even if Zoro didn't allow him to finish. He's on fire, in his chest and his belly and between his thighs — uncomfortable, always the discomfort of being _aware_ of his body, feeling the aching yearning for touch in exactly those parts of his body he wishes weren't there. But muted now, in the way it isn't when he touches himself or when he looks with lust upon someone he can't approach. He _wants_ so badly, and he's so focused on Zoro, that his discomfort with his body is secondary, like pain during a battle. It's for later, he thinks, his head spinning like he's three sheets to the wind. 

Zoro breaks the kiss and growls, low and dark and sensual. "I'm not all take and no give, cook. Not gonna use you like that." And he starts fumbling with the buttons of Sanji's shirt. 

_No._ It isn't panic this time, but denial still knots in his gut, all his grand high thoughts about wanting this more than he hates himself suddenly shattering to nothing. He can't do it. Sanji catches Zoro's wrists and pulls him away. "No," he hisses, regretful and heated all at once. "No, not here, not now. What if someone comes in?" 

"They can fuck off," Zoro shoots back. "Cook, I'm not—" 

" _You're not the one at risk!_ " Sanji hisses back. "Stupid marimo. I want you, but when we're _private._ For right now…" He can't resist, dives in for another kiss. Stupid mossball and his addictive mouth. "For right now, take what I'll give you. The rest… the rest is for _later_ , got it?" 

Zoro grumbles, but doesn't stop Sanji from sinking to his knees again. And Sanji just hopes that Zoro believes him — believes this is nothing more than the fear of getting caught. He has to buy himself enough time to get over it, to be ready to show himself in full to this man he wants so very much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So that thing how I was breaking up Paradise into two parts? Well, um, that's gonna be three parts now. It just keeps getting longer and longer! 
> 
> Come chat with me on my [Discord server](https://discord.gg/SWVYBBn)!


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